LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SKK ARENA, ST. PETERSBURG, 16 FEBRUARY 2018

The internet can be a wonderful thing. As we saw the other day, after much pleading on my part, Jan Ronald Stange saved the day with a St Petersburg review. Last week however, I got an email from Alina Akhtarina with a review of that show after she'd been contacted by a Russian Depeche Mode fanpage on Facebook that I'd been in touch with. It was such a kind gesture and so I'm delighted to present Alina's review, part 2 of the St Petersburg reviews. Thanks so much Alina for this and the pictures and thanks too to Andrew Sankin for telling Alina all about the project.

Pleasure for Russian fans

Let's go back to 16th of February, to a country where -20°C is the normal temperature during winter. This city is Saint Petersburg, Russia where Depeche Mode is our long-awaited guest in our country. 

First I’d like to say without too much detail about how awfully unorganized the concert was. I would like to share that none of the staff took any interest or care about how the fans were treated. Those of us who had bought the early entry ticket option did not get access properly as we had all expected. This was a real disappointment because many of us were expecting the nearest standing position to the stage. We were close but no where near where we had hoped to be . This wish simply never came true.

There were some other points which also affected some of the attendees. We weren’t allowed to bring any water in to the Arena and there apparently was none for sale at the show either. This made for a real problem during the show. It was unusually hot during the opening act. We hoped that we would be offered water but the security weren’t very much help. One guard said that there wouldn't be any offered. All I can say is that I hope future concerts held at Saint-Petersburg's "Sports And Concert Complex” Arena will be handled with more care by the organization. 

I can’t believe it’s already been a week with memories still flowing through my mind. Let’s get back to the show itself. 16th of February St. Petersburg, holds a concert for one of the greatest groups ever, Depeche Mode. This would be their fifth visit to Russia on this tour. Some of you may know that the first time DM ever played Russia was back in September of 1998 on the Singles Tour. This would be the second time I attended the Global Spirit Tour. The first (also in St, Petersburg) was back in July of 2017. 

I’ll tell you about the view from my perspective, a 17 year old girl, who was standing in the second row of the fan zone. The support act was the group BlackLine. It started unexpectedly and all of the audience was full of expectations. The band performed some of their well-known songs. It was pretty good, many people were singing along with BlackLine. Afterwards, only a few minutes left until the show began. Depeche Mode will never let their fans down and the show was simply amazing. Dave Gahan's moves were graceful, his voice fascinating and everyone was enjoying sharing this moment in time. Martin Lee Gore's playing was perfect as always. His solo songs which were performed brilliantly and all of us listened attentively.

Andy Fletcher who as usual was dancing like a young inspired boy behind the keyboards. Peter and Christian did their best to add something new to the sound of the show as a whole. They brought a freshness to some songs with musical reinterpretations of some of the older tracks. 

Let me come up with some details. Was there any differences with the other performance of Global Spirit Tour from July? I believe, there are. Dave unfortunately forgot the first lines of the 3rd verse of Going Backwards. How did he get away with it? Dave played it off like nothing was wrong. He shared a look with Martin, they laughed a little and continued performing. As they say “the show must go on” and it looked like everything moved along as usual. The song itself for me is a real masterpiece. 

It may be of interest to note for some fans that DM’s initial visit to St. Petersburg back in July; Dave didn't use his exploding air cannon with those t-shirts. This time however, someone got a lucky ticket. The atmosphere was majestic. I can say that band as a whole enjoyed their audience and didn't want to end this show. While they were leaving the stage, they sent us many, many kind signs. “See you next time, St. Petersburg!”

Set list for the 16th of February 2018 concert can be found here : https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/depeche-mode/2018/skk-arena-saint-petersburg-russia-53ee3369.html

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Thanks Alina!

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SKK ARENA, ST PETERSBURG, 16 FEBRUARY 2018

When I started this nonsense off, I wondered how many gigs I would able to cover as I presumed that people would say thanks but not thanks to any review request. Happily and to my eternal surprise and delight, that has proved to be wrong and, as you've seen, many people have given up their time to take part. It continually amazes me. Anyway, by the time the St Petersburg gig was about to start, I had no reviewer lined up. It had nearly happened in Hamburg until Claudia, Thomas and Michael saved the day, but this time, I was convinced that I'd run out of luck. But no! Marcel De Groot, a Facebook friend of mine and hereafter known as the saviour of St Petersburg, stepped in and suggested Jan Ronald Stange from Notteroy, Norway as he knew Jan was there. So here is Jan's review. As you'll see in the link at the end of Jan's review, he also writes for Sideline among others, so make sure you check out his other work. Thanks so much for stepping in Jan and thank you for this great review with accompanying pictures (all Jan's unless credited otherwise). I owe you one!

Picture courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

For over 30 years, actually since the Black Celebration Tour in 1986, I’ve been attending every tour at least once, sometimes more, and will probably set a record with five concerts this tour. Most concerts, including the first and the last, have been with my lifelong friend John-Erik, and when we saw the 2nd European leg being added we started discussing where we should go. Initially we considered Helsinki, but the floor were quickly sold out, and after having being poorly seated at our first concert of the tour in Stockholm we didn’t want crappy seats again!

The closest concert, which also was close to the weekend, was St. Petersburg – in a country we hadn’t been before, and would also the easternmost place we’ve seen DM.

Feb. 15th: After some hassle with visas a few weeks before, we were finally on our way from Oslo, and with 6 hours between transfers in Riga we managed to see some of this city too. Arriving in St. Petersburg, we hit the bars at Nevsky Prospect, looking for a “secret” beer place, Beer Geek, well hidden in a backyard. We found it. And later when having a late dinner we even ended up talking to some girls who actually knew what Depeche Mode was – or so they claimed, probably chatting us up to get us to go to a “friends new bar” ;)

Outside the stadium

Feb 16th: Concert day! Started with a lunch where we met up with a Russian contact of John-Erik, Dmitri, who was there both for the concert and some DM CD’s brought to him from Norway. A bit funny when we found out he and his wife actually had traveled a longer distance than us, as their home city of Izhevsk was further inland in Russia and in our opposite direction.

The rest of the day before the concert was spent strolling around St. Petersburg, including a visit to Kazan Cathedral, the most DM related name there. After seeing all the the icon-kissing Russians one might wonder about the actual meaning when naming the PJ remix… satirical I hope!

Approaching the SKK stadium made us feel the closest to “home” as St. Petersburg could offer – not a familiar face in sight, yet a similar feeling to other venues where the Black Swarm would gather… weird, isn’t it?! Just proves once again that, after all, people are people.

All prejudices against vodka-drunken Russians gave way to a calm, but excited, ambience among the people in line and inside the stadium. Maybe not so surprising after all – they only sold coffee and Budweiser (!!!) there. And no drinks were allowed inside the actual venue either, so no worrying about people spilling beer during the concert.

Not having seen Black Line before, we were there just a few minutes before they got on stage. Douglas McCarthy & co played seven energetic songs in their warm-up set – well worth seeing!

The concert itself was excellent; no surprises though, and same setlist as the previous in Minsk and the next in Helsikini. Hearing Martin sing I Want You Now was probably the biggest treat, haven’t heard that one at my previous concerts in Stockholm or London. Having It’s No Good, Barrel Of A Gun, Useless, Insight and Home at the same concert made us think “this is the Ultra tour we never got in 1997!”

Picture courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

The audience was great too, with much younger fans than in London and most other places we’ve seen DM. And again: very well-behaved!

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/depeche-mode/2018/skk-arena-saint-petersburg-russia-53ee3369.html

The only thing to complain about was the horrible expensive Russian 3G/4G prices for my Norwegian mobile subscription, so no real time streaming or SoMe posting during the concert. :/

Feb 17th: A day of sightseeing and *drinking* ;) Well, not that much, but slightly in a Russian style. After seeing the Winter Palace/Hermitage, walking around the “Admiralty” district, we ended up at a well planned destination a block from our hotel; the Museum of Russian Vodka. Was planning to dine there too, but some heavily decorated military oldies and their wives occupied the restaurant, probably sending someone off to retirement. We did get the tour of the museum and some sampling afterwards – highly recommended! 

Jan (left) and Michael Draw (right)

After dinner we met up with Michael Draw, the singer of the Russian dark wave act Otto Dix, and his girl friend, and spent the rest of the night talking about talking about music, Russian culture and mentality, languages and linguistics, more music, Rammstein, food, ballet, MMA, and showing him his music on Spotify – a real surprise for Michael!

Feb 18th: Going home again, with a wish to return to a St. Petersburg without snow or ice!

PS! Do also check out my other writings @ http://www.side-line.com/?s=stange – mostly Norwegian & friends releated, but lot’s of DM fans like some of these artists too 

Regards and “see you next time!” from

Jan Ronald Stange

Nøtterøy

Norway

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Thanks very much Jan!

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SKK, ST PETERSBURG, 13 JULY 2017

After a quick post festival break, Depeche Mode returned to live action at St Petersburg's SKK in front of a capacity sold out crowd of 25,000. Polina Lipezina was there and she wrote this great review for The Global Spirit Tour Project. Thanks very much to Polina for this and thanks as ever to Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group for letting me run riot with their hard work.

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos And Videos Facebook Group

It seems like there is more emotion than a detailed concert description down here! It’s a pretty strange contradiction: I don’t really like St Petersburg much, but the opposite is true when it comes to the concerts in this city. On the Delta Machine tour my favourite concert ended up right in this place. This Thursday, July 13th, it was really warm in St Petersburg and that was great news for all of us who came to the concert early in the morning. We were relaxing on the grass, talking about everything in the world, sometimes connecting things to what we all came for: Depeche Mode. Despite having early entrance tickets, we ended up really exhausted due to the slow and horrible delays getting into the venue. Eventually, we finally entered the concert hall, to be greeted by quite a surprise. Having entered an indoor area, no one would ever imagine that you might need an umbrella and raincoats… this time they were a must! The rain, that had started outside, had soaked through the roof into the concert hall 30 minutes after the crowd was let inside. The roof was leaking! It was embarrassing and it was scary because it could have caused the concert to be cancelled. I hope with their future tours Depeche Mode will never use this horrendous concert hall! I doubt there will be any repairs or changes done to it anyway. But let us return to the main part happening inside this piece of Soviet architecture…

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

After a wait of approximately 1 and a half hours after the crowd was let in, Maya Jane Coles walked onto the stage, playing on this tour for the first time. During the concert in this venue on the Delta Machine tour, the crowd kept shouting out “Depeche Mode!” during the warm-up, which was pretty disrespectful towards the warm-up band. This evening, they were better behaved. Maya was radiating with light and love towards everything she does. Whatever she did made you close your eyes and dissolve in sounds. In some moments, I caught myself thinking that I didn’t want it to end. On this tour I heard all the warm-up bands, except for Horrors, fell in love with Algiers, but Maya… I cannot state as a fact that Maya was better than Algiers, they are all different and cool, but on July the 13th she gave us 40 minutes of awesomeness.

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

Despite that, later on we had a much bigger thing to come. I know that for some people the centre of attraction is Martin. They cannot take their eyes off him for two hours straight, following his guitar swapping and his keyboard playing for the whole show.  For me though,  the hero, this center of attraction, unsurprisingly, is Dave. But St Petersburg has changed everything this time. This is the first concert where I saw not only Dave on stage, and this is surprising. It’s surprising for myself. I was standing right across from Martin and he looked incredible. Everything he was doing was with great love (yes, that’s a revelation to me). David was amazing of course. He was obviously in high spirits, I’ve never seen him smile so much!. But I have to point out that there were less pole dances and other wigglings… There was a tape on Dave’s lower back… Please get well! 

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

From the point where I was standing, I could also see Jez’s work, who diligently tuned guitars and additionally swapped them for Martin. At one point,  Kessler and then Jennifer showed up. Sometimes it’s really interesting to look inside the little corner of the band’s world, even though you’re just standing in a fan zone. The Setlist didn’t bring any surprises (could there be any on the final 6 tour concerts?), but is anyone upset by that? There were a couple of moments I’d like to point out. First was Dave’s catwalk scene during Everything Counts  where he was tapping with his foot to the rhythm of the drums, just like in Just Can't Get Enough on the previous tour. Has it happened even before this time? Sccondly,  in the fan zone there was a girl who that night came to Depeche Mode concert for the first time. She said, it was long awaited dream - during Going Backwards she was standing full of tears… Dreams do come true.


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Thank you very much Polina.